How slums in India can be made livable

How slums in India can be made livable

Slums in urban India symbolise both hope and despair. They are the entry point for impoverished villagers seeking to escape their deprivation.

Living conditions in them, however, are often so unspeakable that the declared aim of the government is to have a slum-free India.

But if the first detailed census of slum households in the country is anything to go by, they are very varied in nature, and therefore the government's attitude to, and policy for, slums needs to be much more nuanced.

What can be said unequivocally is that a slum is no fit place to live.

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Image: A boy living on the street walks on a wall displaying publicity posters of Golden Globe award-winning filmPhotographs: Arko Datta/Reuters.

How slums in India can be made livable

In fact, the census covers not just officially recognised and notified slums but others as well, and the criteria used to identify a slum is any place which is home to at least 60-70 households and is unfit to live in for a variety of reasons like the nature of the shelter available, overcrowding, the lack of sanitation and drinking water.

Nearly twice as many households in slums do not have in-premise latrines or drinking water sources as do urban households overall.

Forty-five per cent of slum houses are one-room units; 82 per cent of slum households have three to eight members.

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Image: Children play in an open space next to the shantytown of Dharavi, considered to be one of Asia's largest slums.Photographs: Arko Datta/Reuters.